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By only using the 'add to report' link found on all eligible pages, you can populate the content you need for your report. Once you're ready, view your report and you can review and sort your content as well as adding a custom cover page content.

“This is a nice way to use the information on the website. It is so easy to use and customizable. We use it weekly.”–Maureen Nelson, Grow South Dakota.

Join us for a free demo webinar with live examples, to learn more about this tool and its functionality. You can attend at no charge but space is limited and registration is required. Save your seat today!

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

February 22, 2018 from 11:00 am-12:00 pm CST.

Free Webinar: Place VR for Economic Development

How do you reach a CEO sitting in a boardroom, a thousand miles away or across the world? How do you capture the imagination and attention of a site developer sitting at their mahogany desk, sifting through a mile-high stack of proposals? Elite communities have discovered the answer – virtual reality.

At 2017 IEDC in Toronto, Canada, Golden Shovel Agency unveiled the newest innovation in business and workforce attraction for economic developers: 360 Virtual Reality Immersion Videos. This technology allows site selectors and businesses to experience your community from their location. Why worry about site visits when you can bring your community directly to the site selection committee?

By creating new ways to communicate and share experiences, virtual reality is allowing consumers to connect with brands, buyers to view real estate and tourists to visit new attractions, without actually being there. It is so effective that Volvo is using virtual reality which allows people to test drive their vehicles in a fully immersive virtual world. Due to the vast potential for diverse applications, Goldman Sachs labeled virtual reality as the next computing platform. In their ‘Profiles in Innovation’ report (Goldman Sachs , 2016) they estimate that the hardware alone will be an $80 billion industry, all within the next decade.

In this webinar, you will learn how 360 VR technology is being used by economic developers as a business and workforce attraction tool.

Golden Shovel Agency will showcase current communities who are using virtual technology immersion videos and explain how your community can benefit from a 360 VR Tour.

In the meantime, you can watch some of our previous webinars from the list below. Check them out!

The economic development industry is changing faster than ever as new approaches and technologies are being deployed. Learn how virtual reality, regional connectivity, big data and lead tracking are adding fresh sophistication to small town economic development marketing. Through examples and case studies of progressive cooperatives, you’ll see how utilizing these new technologies can convert an aspirational success story into qualified business attraction leads.

Generating reports for site selectors, grant administrators, private funding groups or board members can take hours—especially if the information is scattered across multiple locations.

Wouldn’t you like to have all the information in a single location in a ready-to-use report generator? What if that information was located on your website and pulled existing, relevant information?

Golden Shovel Agency’s Universal Report tool for responsive sites makes it fast and easy for users to createcustomized reports using content from your website.By only using the 'add to report' link found on all eligible pages, you can populate the content you need for your report. Once you're ready, view your report and you can review and sort your content as well as adding a custom cover page content.

Strategic plans and the strategic planning process are vital to organizational relevance and value. And they often create new energy and enthusiasm among staff and volunteers. But without new resources to implement them, these plans often fail to meet heightened expectations, or risk becoming the dreaded binder gathering dust on a shelf. Tom DiFiore, President of National Community Development Services (NCDS) shares in this webinar five-steps to making sure your strategic plan gets funded and fully implemented.

Do you mind your business? More specifically, do you mind your small businesses? It is widely known that the heavy majority of net new jobs created over the next 10 years will be from entrepreneurship yet most economic developers are spending the majority of their time recruiting big business.

During this webinar we will take a look at just how crucial small businesses are to a local economy. Join Mark Hays, SizeUp LBI National Sales Executive on this session, and find out different ways to help grow those businesses without having to change much about how you currently do your job.

We all know that ‘facts and data’ are important for Economic Development communication. But the game is changing – Big Data strategies are now table stakes for innovative agencies and AI is the new buzzword. Standard marketing websites are giving way to interactive presentations that engage the user with information. But how to make sense of these new capabilities and apply them effectively to the needs of local and regional Economic Development?

In this webinar Bob Lytle, President of rel8ed.to and Aaron Brossoit, CEO of Golden Shovel reviewed recent examples of online systems supporting the goals of a US regional business attraction agency. You’ll view Big Data at work to understand the market, analytics strategies used to find and engage leads in the digital world, and simple steps to improve your online presence with compelling, interactive content.

How do you reach a CEO sitting in a boardroom, a thousand miles away or across the world? How do you capture the imagination and attention of a site developer sitting at their mahogany desk, sifting through a mile-high stack of proposals? Elite communities have discovered the answer – virtual reality.

At IEDC in Toronto, Canada, Golden Shovel Agency unveiled the newest innovation in business and workforce attraction for economic developers: 360 Virtual Reality Immersion Videos. This technology allows site selectors and businesses to experience your community from their location

In this webinar, you will learn how 360 VR technology is being used by economic developers as a business and workforce attraction tool.

Lead Forensics is the lead generation tool that helps you fuel your sales outreach and grow your business.

What can Lead Forensics do for your organization?

Imagine if you could take control of your lead generation activity and convert sales-ready prospects, before your competitors even get close? Lead Forensics is the software that reveals the identity of your anonymous website visitors, and turns them into actionable sales-ready leads. In real-time.

For this webinar, we have invited Justin Sommer, Executive Director of Grow Piqua Now, to briefly share about his own experience while working with the Lead Forensics software and the improved results you can get out of your economic development efforts by implementing this cutting-edge tool.

Economic Development video for business attraction is a powerful tool and strategy, but like any other form of content marketing, it works wonders when it's crafted by a professional who knows how to tell your unique story visually. In this session, presented by Brian Aiken, Founder of Neon Cloud Productions, you will find out why it's not just about having the content but when video artistry is designed by an expert, it will guide your intended audience through the sales process and call them to action.

In a 21-year career serving as the chief executive of a Main Street program, rural county economic development organization, and two metropolitan economic development organizations and chambers of commerce, Joe Raso used his Business Retention & Expansion program as the foundation for all his work. In that time, he discovered the four essential challenges all economic development staff and organizations face in their work and in this presentation, Raso will explain each of these challenges and offer solutions you can implement immediately.

Each year more than half a million new businesses are formed. These new employers are a key element to creating strong communities, but often their first interface with local government relies upon the tools of a different era. Those tools are costing cities too much money, and too many opportunities.

In this webinar, presented by Peter Koht, Co-Owner of OpenCounter, we’ll share statistics and case studies to show how the efforts to make these processes more transparent and digital have led to higher levels of service and efficiency.

Cost-benefit reports are ubiquitous in economic development but their quality and relevance vary significantly. The lack of an industry standard concerning terminology and presentation contribute to widespread confusion and misinterpretation. In many cases a high-quality cost-benefit report will help all sides better understand the good and the bad of what may come with a planned project and bring to light issues requiring further study. However, in too many instances these potentially useful reports are intimidating, opaque, and ultimately abandoned in favor of “gut feel”.

This session, presented by Paul Scheuren, an economist and Principal of Impact DataSource, is intended to help economic developers, their boards, and other stakeholders cut through the jargon, identify the hallmarks of a high-quality cost-benefit report, and utilize the cost-benefit report to its fullest potential.

Cost-benefit reports are ubiquitous in economic development but their quality and relevance vary significantly. The lack of an industry standard concerning terminology and presentation contribute to widespread confusion and misinterpretation. In many cases a high-quality cost-benefit report will help all sides better understand the good and the bad of what may come with a planned project and bring to light issues requiring further study. However, in too many instances these potentially useful reports are intimidating, opaque, and ultimately abandoned in favor of “gut feel”.

This session, presented by Paul Scheuren, an economist and Principal of Impact DataSource, is intended to help economic developers, their boards, and other stakeholders cut through the jargon, identify the hallmarks of a high-quality cost-benefit report, and utilize the cost-benefit report to its fullest potential.

There are 10,000 baby-boomers retiring every day. This demographic fact provides a great opportunity to help revitalize small towns and cities. Bring talent, experience, and income to your area by attracting retirees.

How do you attract this asset to your community? How age friendly is your community? What are “encore adults” looking for in an age-friendly community?

In this session, presented by Dean F. Whittaker, CEcD., President & CEO of Whittaker Associates, Inc., you will learn the eight factors of an age-friendly community that attract active “encore adults” and how to assess your community’s age-friendliness.

Presenter Bio: Dean Whittaker is Founder, President and CEO of Whittaker Associates, where he assists on projects as a coach/advisor to the team, using his 30 years of experience in economic development and industrial/commercial real estate. Dean’s background includes managing three local chambers of commerce, and serving as a field staff person and managing director of Industrial Development for the State of Illinois.

This session will be for those seeking to understand and grow their community’s retail and restaurant businesses. Discover how retail today is a catalyst for economic development fostering a critical base to a vibrant community and strong workforce. Learn the consumer shopping trends that drive profits impacting real estate decision for opening and closing locations.

Presenter Bio: This webinar was presented by Lacy Beasley, President & COO of Retail Strategies. Lacy has been involved in retail real estate since 2005. Her experience with The Shopping Center Group and the Dickson County Chamber of Commerce prior to joining Retail Strategies provides her with the insight to understand the connections needed from the public and private side of the conversation.

Disruptive trends in technology are irrevocably changing economic development. Employment, supply chains, and social norms are all being impacted. Traditional models are no longer sufficient; our assumptions about what constitutes economic vitality must evolve. Every industry is adapting to respond to disruptive trends in technology. Economic development–as a profession–must show similar flexibility and a similar commitment to change.

This webinar, presented by Jon Roberts, Principal and Managing Director at TIP Strategies, continues a dialogue that can move our profession in a new direction. Jon was elected to the board of KMFA radio in Austin, Texas, and is active in the technology community. He maintains his ties to the Northwest and is a Fellow of the Washington World Affairs Council in Seattle. He has served on the boards of several start-up technology companies and on state task forces and gubernatorial committees.

What incentives would you offer to a company that would create 50 jobs with an average pay of $80,000 a year? In this session, you would learn how to attract these workers without the incentives.

Dean Whittaker will be leading a discussion on how to attract the mobile workforce or "freelancers" to your community. Who are these workers and what makes them tick?

Presenter Bio: Dean Whittaker is founder, president and CEO of Whittaker Associates, where he creates, invents, learns, and teaches as he assists on projects as a coach/advisor to the team, using 30 years of experience in economic development and industrial/commercial real estate.

Effective communication is crucial when it comes to building support for your vision among local ED stakeholders. If the benefits of the project are seen as one-dimensional, you may only convince a portion of your audience, but if you are able to convey the benefits from multiple angles you can build broad support and receive less resistance from boards or city councils.

Impact DataSource is an Austin, Texas-based economic consulting firm that specializes in economic and fiscal impact analysis. During this session, Paul Scheuren will draw on Impact DataSource’s 20+ years of experience evaluating and communicating the value of a diverse range of projects and will show how helping economic developers analyze the impact of “the deal” is much more valuable than reporting regional GDP or other stuffy economics metrics.

Presenter Bio: Paul Scheuren is a principal and economist at Impact DataSource and currently leads the firm’s economic and fiscal impact model development. Paul also conducts analyses for larger projects including hospitals, mixed-use developments, oil and gas projects, manufacturing firms, as well as a variety of other activities. In addition, Paul has completed several successful economic analyses for the USCIS EB-5 program.

Grant funding can play a significant role in project feasibility. Securing grant funding can be a bit tricky at times, but in this session, you will learn tips on how to find available grants, how to cultivate relationships with funders, and how to create a “dream” proposal that a program officer can hold up as a model for other grantseekers to emulate, rather than an application that needs explanation.

Presenter Bio: Michelle Landsverk, President of Landsverk & Associates, Inc. presented this highly relevant session. Michelle is a consulting business that works with businesses, organizations, and communities. She has worked in the nonprofit and economic development arena for fifteen years, and has helped numerous organizations with the process of project design, aligning partners, and successfully securing federal, state, and private grant funding for their projects.

Implementing the fundamentals of CRM, or Customer Relation Management, is of critical importance for economic developers. CRM allows economic developers to track and manage potential projects over an extended period of time. In addition, it allows for the connection of various stakeholders including company executives, bankers, site selectors, and government officials to any specific project allowing you to quickly identify individuals associated with any project.

Join Todd Smithee, President of Conrin, Inc. for a brief but highly interesting session to review about the advantages of integrating a CRM that will hep you to get the most out of your economic development efforts.

Presenter Bio: Todd Smithee is President of Conrin, Inc, which he founded in 2003. Since its inception, Conrin has specialized in implementing customer relation management for economic development organizations, providing assistance in areas including lead, account, contact, project and retention call management.

Websites are a critical public face for any economic development organization. Whether large or small, your organization needs to think strategically and as an economic development organization, your goal is to provide relevant information and resources to your target audiences, like site selectors and businesses, so they can make investment decisions.

The right approach will maximize impact, inform target users and generate engagement. As you know, technology progresses everyday and there are always new options you can take advantage of. In this webinar, presented by Aaron Brossoit, Golden Shovel CEO, Lisa Hurley, Executive Director at York County Development Corporation and Bob Henningsen, Partner at Smart Solutions Group, Inc. we presented the best practices and tools that made the York County Development Corporation website a winner of the Gold Excellence in Economic Development Awards at the 2015 IEDC Annual Conference.

Events

Generating reports for site selectors, grant administrators, private funding groups or board members can take hours—especially if the information is scattered across multiple locations.
Wouldn’t you like to have all the information in a single location in a ready-to-use report generator? What if that information was located on your website and pulled existing, relevant information?
Golden Shovel Agency’s Universal Report tool for responsive sites makes it fast...